I am – Hercules!!

A structural engineer gets himself sent to the prison he secretly designed in order to help free his brother, incarcerated there for murdering the brother of the U.S. vice president. Is it the next “24”? Or “Oz” without quite so much anal rape? I can tell you that, though “Prison Break” will fill “24’s” timeslot until January, it isn’t anywhere near the latter show’s league.

Even to my puny brain, the show doesn’t make a great deal of sense. The guy who spent years designing a prison can’t remember his own designs without elaborate crib notes? The warden is willing to risk his career to make certain some kind of wacky Popsicle-stick scale model of the Taj Mahal is completed to impress his wife? Perhaps I’m overthinking it. The cast is very charismatic.

Paul Scheuring (“A Man Apart”) does the scripting. Brett Ratner (“After The Sunset”) directs the pilot. According to Rotten Tomatoes, Scheuring’s “A Man Apart” was one of the worst reviewed movies of 2003, garnering positive reviews from only 10 percent of the nation’s critics. Had “Prison Break’s” pilot been released to cinemas, I doubt it would have won much more acclaim than “Apart.”

But what matters Herc’s opinion? Variety says:

… emulating "24's" delicate balancing act is full of potential tripwires, and the surplus of moving parts in the two-hour premiere doesn't make entirely clear how "Break" will escape triggering them. … there's so much setup in Paul Scheuring's script that even in the hands of director Brett Ratner the opening hour leaves more questions than answers. … Fox was well advised to premiere the show in a two-hour format, sinking the hook in a little deeper. Yet even with the premiere sprinkling enough tantalizing bread crumbs to warrant a return visit, there's insufficient evidence as to how the more muddled aspects will unfold over future installments. …

The Hollywood Reporter says:

… Suspend credibility on a few key points and, in return, get a series that keeps you glued to the set for a full hour. … Initial episodes place most of the burden of carrying the drama on [Wentworth] Miller's capable shoulders, and he is up to the task. Later in the season, following the breakout, the series traces events in the lives of the escaped felons and slowly unravels the conspiracy. …

The Washington Post says:

… when the early birds are as punishingly junky as Fox's "Prison Break," it's only natural to suspect some sort of vendetta at work. … It's 3-B TV: Boring Beyond Belief, a hideous hybrid that even Fox publicity admits is an attempt to clone at least three movies … Even if it had an original bone in its body, though, "Prison Break" […] would come off as more cruel than unusual. The somber pretentiousness of it, reinforced by performances uniformly overwrought, make it a heavy weight to bear, yet one resolutely empty-headed. … An apparently evil Secret Service agent had said consolingly to a colleague earlier in the first episode, "Look, three months, it'll all be over" -- but if sanity prevails, it'll all be over much more quickly than that.

The Los Angeles Times says:

… does not waste any time in establishing itself as completely implausible — which is a smart move indeed. … If you're still on board at the end of the two-hour pilot, directed by Brett Ratner ("Rush Hour") — and even without much in the way of action, it holds the interest quite handily — you will have long since stopped peppering the TV screen with inconvenient questions. If the show is not absolutely critic-proof, if it is a convocation of clichés and old tropes, it is forearmed with a response difficult to argue with: "Yeah, so?"

The Boston Herald says:

… The network is banking that you're so hungry for new TV that you'll tune into this drama that teases the suspense of ``24'' but falls short of even a ``Murder, She Wrote'' rerun. Don't be scammed. The premise is intriguing … But the show is criminally stupid. … Maybe it's because I've been spoiled by ``Oz,'' but ``Prison Break'' has more in common with L. Frank Baum's series of kids' books than the dark prison drama. Isn't prison supposed to be scary? Even a teensy threatening? …the ``surprise'' at the climax of hour one - hinted at in the opening seconds - is silly. At the end of Scofield's trial, the judge sentences the new con to five years, with eligibility for parole in 2 years. I'm giving ``Prison Break'' 13 weeks.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer says:

It looked like it had potential, too. No doubt about it, "Prison Break's" first hour had the air of a series that was going places. Places like critics' lists of best new shows and proclamations of fan addiction on message boards. Then Fox gave us the second and third hours, which should have seized the pilot's energy and escalated from there. Instead, they gave us a sense of what it's like to stare down a weighty sentence -- a serious drag. … as Linc tries to tell Michael, prison life defies all contingency plans, a fact that would add some exciting twists to the plot if this version of life inside wasn't a fat snooze. …

The Orlando Sentinel gives it two stars (out of five) and says:

Fox's Prison Break has speed. Believability, however, fled this penitentiary and made a clean getaway. … Almost all the way, Prison Break seems preposterous. … The successes of 24 and ABC's Lost have prompted broadcasters to try more sprawling action stories that unfold like novels of the airwaves. But the first three hours of Prison Break suggest this particular book isn't must-read TV. … keeps turning from the central plot and going off on annoying tangents: Lincoln's estranged teen son is headed for trouble. Michael's lawyer could delay her wedding. The prison physician, who's also the governor's daughter, is fascinated by Michael. Michael's cellmate is having woman trouble. Other colorful inmates, mobsters and a bishop clog the hour. …

USA Today gives it three stars (out of four) and says:

… the kind of show for which you don't just have to suspend disbelief, you have to pitch it out the window. … intriguing and extremely unlikely … Granted, every aspect of the patently silly premise screams "Do not try this at home." But Miller makes Michael such an appealing hero — taciturn, determined, ingenious — that you may be willing to buy the plot just to see more of him. … For the most and best part, Prison Break sticks close to Michael and his single-minded effort to free his brother. But as with 24, the show needs a host of subplots to fill out its season-long continuing story — and as with 24, many of them don't work. Most tiresome, unfortunately, is that clichéd government conspiracy, which would have you believe the Secret Service devotes all its time to either murdering people or framing people for murder. … Try it. If it grows to be oppressive, you can always take a break. Nobody's holding you prisoner.

Entertainment Weekly gives it an “A-minus” and says:

To fully embrace Fox's incredibly entertaining Prison Break, one must first forgive the ludicrous premise … Let's pause, laugh, and salute this series for being so well shot and acted that these little dragonflies of illogic buzz us only briefly. (But seriously, how lucky for Michael that he was sent to this particular prison — otherwise we'd be watching him in Leavenworth hitting his head and muttering ''Stupidstupidstupid!'' for five years.) … The camera, for instance, swoops in and out of Michael's full-torso tattoo, in which he's embedded names, numbers, and an entire blueprint of the prison. The series' writers dearly love that gothic swirl of ink on flesh: In one scene, Michael whittles away at a special screw he's acquired to help him unbolt his toilet. When it looks the correct size, he presses its circumference against a dark circle tattoed on his arm to see if it matches. Rather than just putting it in the bolt he's sitting next to. (Oh, the buzzing is back...) But such minor silliness is easily dismissed — especially in the wake of the previous, unsettling scene, set in Chicago's Jaume Plensa-designed Crown Fountain, which is bookended by giant screens on which video faces flicker. As Tunney milks information from a nervous woman who fears she's been targeted by government hitmen, the video faces ominously blink and stare in the background, Blade Runner-style. …

8 p.m. Monday. Fox.

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